Field of the Invention
The disclosed invention relates generally to image processing, and more particularly, but not by way of limitation, relating to image stitching and summarizing aerial views.
Description of the Related Art
UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are emerging as de facto imaging method for many applications including defense, surveillance, asset management. Surveillance and reconnaissance tasks are currently often performed using an airborne platform such as a UAV. The airborne platform can carry different sensors. EO/IR cameras can be used to view a certain area from above. To support the task from the sensor analyst, different image processing techniques can be applied on the data, both in real-time or for forensic applications. Effective summarization of view of the multiple cameras on an (unmanned) aerial vehicle is of great importance in such uses. Additionally, a method of stitching images provided by such UAVs is needed.
Stitching images for use in visual analytic business is of great importance. For example, creating a panoramic view from videos of multiple cameras is a critical component for many analytic applications including defense, surveillance, asset management.
Algorithms for aligning and stitching images into seamless photo-mosaics are among the oldest and most widely used in computer vision. One of the most important aspects of image stitching is to seamlessly blend overlapping images, even in the presence of parallax, lens distortion, and scene illumination, to provide a mosaic without any artifacts that looks as natural as possible. Evidently, there is some subjectivity in interpreting how natural a panorama or a mosaic looks. Furthermore, the stitching techniques must be able to extrapolate well to the regions of the panorama where there is information only from a single image.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an improved way to stitch images and provide image summarization.